Disciples of Christ and cosmopolitanism in a city of conflict: minority subjectivities in a faith-based school in Jaffa, Israel

ABSTRACT Located in Israel’s contested city of Jaffa, The Church of Scotland’s Tabeetha School is a faith-based, colonial-international school featuring an unlikely combination of Arab-Palestinian pupils, Christian ethos, Scottish spirit, and globally oriented curriculum. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the Scottish School, this article unpacks the value of a Christian and international education as an alternative to the segregated Israeli public education system, which has institutionalised discriminatory practices against the Arab-Palestinian minority. Considering the hostile sociopolitical context, findings reveal how complex intersections of religious tradition, colonial legacy, local ethnonational agendas, and multicultural discourses shape student subjectivities rooted in transnational, cosmopolitan, and advocacy global citizenship models. For Jaffa’s Arab-Palestinians, international education within a Christian school offers alternative avenues to attain educational equity, employment opportunities, and belonging by accumulating international capital and developing pragmatic global citizenships. Despite the exclusion of Arab-Palestinian identities within the bounds of the Jewish state, Tabeetha School creates space enabling their preservation while encouraging students to forge new transnational attachments and allegiances, which provide advantage in our increasingly globalised world.